


You Can Pretend

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [119]
Category: DCU
Genre: Established Relationship, First Time, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Penetrative Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 01:08:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15763509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Sometimes Bruce and Clark sleep together. But they aren't lovers--right?





	You Can Pretend

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Okay, it’s just sex, and a one-time thing at that! Or, maybe a five-time thing. Or, let’s be honest, I’ve lost count how many times. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“I should go.”

“Hmmm?” The arms around you go tight, tighter, edge their way back from crush. “Don’t have to.”

“I know. But I should.”

He kisses your neck, the soft and vulnerable space in you that he’s drawn to. “Bruce,” he murmurs sleepily, “please stay. It isn’t anywhere close to dawn.”

You know better than to listen, you do. This is exactly how you got in trouble in the first place--listening to Clark when he’s close like this, when the feel of his skin against yours is louder than sense. That first time, though, you had blood loss to blame it on; the second, exhaustion; the third habit--but after that? How many times have there been for which you have no excuse other than the lamest one, the flimsiest: you wanted to. He was there and he reached for you or he smiled, in that small honest way, and drew you across the room, halfway across the country, and back into his bed.

It’s always his bed. Never yours. This is the sensible choice, the logical one; if you can’t justify this to yourself, how the hell can you explain it to Alfred? Much less to Damian or Dick. Their questions, their confusion, their amusement--you feel like it would eat you alive.

And anyway, you’re not lovers. You’re friends who fall in bed every now and then, when the world you spend your lives defending is too loud or too stupid or too much. That’s it. So there’s no reason for anybody else to know. No way they could understand.

He’s licking at your neck now, biting gently at the curve of it, the place where the lines of your throat and your shoulder meet. His mouth’s moving lazy, lazy and sweet, lazy and full of every intention of getting you ginned up for round three if that’s what it takes to make sure that you stay.

“You’re cheating,” you tell him, tipping your head back against his shoulder.

“Maybe.” He nips at your ear. “Is that an objection I hear?”

You clutch at his arms where they’re still locked around you, arch your hips back against his erection, feel the quivering stiffness of your own as it staggers somehow back to life. “God, no.”

“Good.” He lifts his head and finds your mouth. “That’s so good.”

You’re sore from before, stretched wide for him, wet from his spunk, from the work of his wicked tongue, and you can taste the mess he made of you, remember the way he groaned when he was eating you out, the way you writhed even with his hands clapped on your thighs, the small, hurt sounds he drew out of you, notes in one of a hundred songs he can play on your body as if he’s known its mysteries his whole life.

The first time, it was just sex; a quick, stand-up fuck in the Watchtower infirmary while the stitches in your side were still new. It was Luthor, again, madness in the form of repetitive drive, and while it’d been a fairly straightforward operation--they hadn’t even needed the whole League--one of the man’s goons had managed to cut you, to drive some kind of high-carbon blade through your armor and deep into your flesh. You’d gone down on one knee, feeling every inch of it, the jagged teeth of the knife tearing.

And then you’d gotten back up, because that’s what you do, but Clark had noticed. Had been upset about it; your wound, yes, but also your refusal to stay down when it’d been clear that he had the fight well in hand. So he’d swooped you up the second the Metropolis PD arrived and flown you straight to the Watchtower, carried you kicking and screaming to the infirmary.

“I’m _fine_ ,” you’d said a dozen times, a hundred. “Christ, Clark. You’re overreacting.”

He’d dumped you on the nearest biobed and crossed his arms across his chest, glaring. “Show me fine,” he said. “Let me see how badly you’re not bleeding.”

If he hadn’t been between you and the door, you’d have left. If you hadn’t been woozy from the blood loss, confused as to why the suit’s wound repair system hadn’t kicked in, you’d have punched him if you had to and stomped down the hall to your ship. But he was and you were were so you took the path of least resistance and pried off your cowl, opened your armor and tossed the chest plate with a clatter to the floor.

The cut was wide and deep and painful. The serrated edge had dug itself in deep.

“What the fuck was that knife made of?” you muttered.

“I don’t know,” Clark had said, his voice tight, “but maybe that’s less important right now that you not bleeding to death.”

He stood beside you the whole time the med computers were working, stared you down while the thing send its needles racing up the torn edges of your flesh. It hurt, even with the analgesics at work, and you’d turned your face away and tried to pretend he couldn’t see you wince, couldn’t see every micro-twitch of your body that shouted of unexpressed pain.

“You could have died,” he said when the computer was done, when you were fastening a big white bandage into place.

“No shit,” you muttered, ripping off the last piece of tape.

Then his hands were around your wrists and he was looking down at you; in his eyes, fury battled with fear. “You could have died for no reason. No reason at all. Luthor was down, Bruce; I had him cornered. There was exactly zero reason for you to keep pushing like that.”

You’d been tired. Tired and aching and annoyed, so fucking annoyed with the overgrown Boy Scout routine. So things had gone a little south for you. So you’d taken a hit. So what? Happened almost every night of the week.

“Then maybe next time you need help, you should call Hal," you’d snapped. “Or Dinah.”

“Why?”

“Because when you ask for my help,” you’d said, baring your teeth, “you’ll get it from stem to stern. You don’t get to decide when I’ll back off, Kent. That’s my call.”

Something in his face had shifted, swirled, like a dust storm out on the prairie, and you’d felt a flash of triumph at finally getting to him, finally rattling him, after all these goddamn years of watching him play Mr. Stoic, Mr. Good Guy, Mr. Everybody Follow My Lead. But it was only a flash, a blink of an eye, because then he was hauling you up off the table and into his arms and when he kissed you, hurried and furious, it had only made sense to lean into it, to give back as good as he was giving, to snarl into his mouth as he lifted you like a paperweight and pinned you to the wall.

It’d had been unexpected, inevitable. It’d been the hottest sex of your life.

He’d pulled you apart, metal piece by piece, fucked you open on his fingers, and then opened his suit somehow, peeled it down his hips just enough to break free. You’d come with him only halfway inside and then again on his cock, your hips bouncing as he held you up with one hand and worked you over with his fist, and when it was over, when he’d let go and filled you to the brim and past it, his come splattering at your feet, he’d lowered you to the floor and kissed you again, gasping, leaning into your fingers as you clawed at his back.

“We can’t ever do this again,” you told him, panting the words in his ear. “You understand me? Never.”

He’d nodded, the sweat from his forehead spilling onto your cheek. “Of course not. Yeah. You’re right.”

A month later, though, you had, and again a week after that, and now it’s been more times than you can count. But nobody knows. Nobody else even suspects, that’s how quiet you’ve kept it. How careful you’ve been.

You’re not lovers, but you think about Clark all the time; not Superman, no. Kent.

It’s Clark’s hands that you dream about, spreading wide and possessive over your back; Clark’s voice, his laughter, the genuine joy in his face when he watches you come.

It’s Clark that you miss when you’re in your own home, when you’re prowling its hallways alone. When you sit at breakfast listening to the boys argue and not eating your toast, you can almost imagine him there at the table beside you, his glasses sliding down his nose as he hums at his coffee, squints critically at the _Gotham Gazette_.

You’re not lovers, but when you’re in his bed like you are now, his fingers feathering over your hole, his heart pounding loud against your back, you can forget that. You can pretend.

“Can I?” he asks. “Bruce, will I hurt you?”

“You won’t hurt me.” You lift up your hand and wind it in the damp dark of his hair. “I promise.”

He fucks you slow and steady, your knee bent, his hand on your cock.

“I love feeling you like this,” he whispers when you’re close, when you’re hot and fast in his fist. “Every part of you shaking. It’s like you were made for me, Bruce. And me for you.”

You spurt over his fingers, a feeble, aching jerk, and you cry out, louder than you mean to, louder than you ever have.

“Oh honey,” he says, his hips stuttering, his pace growing harder, fast. “Oh god, honey.”

He pours into you, empties himself, gives you just as much as before, and if you say something you shouldn’t, something soft and needy, something that you wake up whispering in your own bed when you're cold and alone--well. You can squeeze your eyes shut as he nuzzles your cheek and swear to yourself it’s not true.


End file.
